City fighting Covid ‘with one hand tied behind back’
BIRMINGHAM City Council is being forced to fight Covid “with one hand tied behind its back” due to Whitehall silence on funding, claims a health chief.
The council is yet to be told its public health allocation – the amount it will be given by the Government to fight Covid among other demands in 2021/22.
As a result, it has been unable to prepare for the year ahead, according to cabinet member for health and social care Cllr Paulette Hamilton
(Lab). Cllr Hamilton said: “We are in the middle of the worst public health crisis in 100 years, and yet the Government are forcing us to fight with one hand tied behind our back.
“The ongoing silence on public health is holding us back and that puts lives at risk. We need answers now.
“From test and trace, to rolling out the vaccine, and now giving councils certainty in public health funding, this incompetent Conservative Government has repeatedly refused to work with local communities to deliver the best results. That means they have too been slow to act, systems have failed, and lives have been lost. Council budgets have been ripped apart by the cost of Covid, and now the Conservatives are asking local people to pay more and get less with a Tory Council Tax hike and reductions in services demanded from Whitehall.”
Public health funding grants to councils have been reduced by £700 million in real terms from 2015/16 to 2019/20 according to figures from the Local Government Association (LGA).
An LGA spokesman said in previous years the public health allocation was given by the end of the calendar year, but that in recent years it has got “later and later”.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesman said: “The Government is supporting directors of public health, and their teams, to protect and improve the public’s health and wellbeing during the current pandemic and beyond. As part of the recent Spending Review we have committed to keeping the public health grant, meaning local authorities can continue to invest in prevention and essential frontline health services. We will set out the allocations for the public health grant in due course.
“In addition to the baseline funding for public health, we have also made over £10 billion available to local councils to address the costs and impacts of Covid-19.”